When a child is sexually abused, too much of the truth gets twisted by more vocal and crafty adults. And children and those who are now adults strugg
When a child is sexually abused, too much of the truth gets twisted by more vocal and crafty adults. And children and those who are now adults struggle with whether or not they “went along”.
An adult commits a sexual criminal act. Violates the child. Crosses a sacred boundary.
But the weight of that act is placed on the child. A life sentence.
And that is not where it belongs.
A child does not meet abuse with desire, intention, or understanding.
They meet it with trust. With dependence. With a nervous system still learning what safety is.
The act is a boundary crossing sexual violation. A crime.
The child is not.
Yet many of us were taught, quietly or out loud, to think otherwise.
We hear words like:
“They were acting grown.”
“They didn’t stop it.”
“They must have liked it.”
“They knew what they were doing.” (They may have known that they wanted love, acceptance, belonging, shelter, food, safety…that isn’t “consent”. It is exploitation, abuse, coercion, and duress. That’s terrifying, even if they don’t recognize it. )
These ideas do something dangerous.
They move the adult’s responsibility onto a small body that never asked for it.
Not because the child is guilty.
But because it is easier to live with the truth when the blame is shared.
Children survive abuse the only ways their bodies know how.
Some freeze.
Some go quiet.
Some comply.
Some disconnect.
Some seem calm.
Some grow confused about their own reactions.
None of this is sexuality.
It is survival.
And when we mistake survival for consent, or trauma for desire, we place a second wound on the child’s life.
Many Survivors grow up carrying a hidden belief:
“Something in me caused this.”
That belief grows into shame.
Into silence.
Into a feeling of being broken or unsafe inside their own skin.
But the truth is simpler and kinder:
Nothing sexual begins in a child.
Sex was brought to them.
It did not come from them.
Adults own their thoughts.
Adults own their choices.
Adults own the harm.
Children own their bodies.
Their tenderness. Their innocence.
Their right to grow without adult meaning forced onto them.
When we protect this boundary, we protect more than individual children.
We protect our collective future.
We teach our community to recognize harm clearly.
We remove excuses before they can take root.
We give Survivors a clean place to stand when they begin to heal.
This is not about blame.
It is about dignity.
It is about returning the weight of wrongdoing to the hands that created it.
And letting children, at last, be only what they were always meant to be:
children.
Stop blaming innocent children for violent and harmful acts committed against them.